


I Envy the Wind

by damnslippyplanet



Series: Songs of Experience [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Finale, Probably the healthiest thing these two could do is just take to the sea permanently
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-24 10:12:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6150215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnslippyplanet/pseuds/damnslippyplanet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will had spent a matter of weeks locked in the depths of the BSHCI, and he’d still felt blinded by the sunlight when he’d emerged.  He can’t imagine the depth of starvation for fresh air and the warmth of sunlight on bare skin that Hannibal must feel after three years.  Hannibal lies out on the deck for hours, languid as a cat, soaking up warmth,  His skin loses its unnatural pallor, except for the splotchy tan lines where bandages still hide parts of him from the sun.</p>
<p>When he falls asleep, beads of sweat form glistening on his skin and Will does not bother to hide his fascination with the sight.  When he comes back into the cabin and submits to Will’s tending of his injuries, his skin radiates the rays he’s soaked up.  Will doesn’t even need to touch him to feel the heat glowing from him.  But he touches anyway, perhaps a bit more than is strictly needed.  Only a bit.  They are, both of them, still being careful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Envy the Wind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheGlintOfTheRail](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGlintOfTheRail/gifts).



_ I envy the sun _ __  
_ That brightens your summer _ __  
_ That warms your body _ __  
_ And holds you in her heat _ __  
_ And makes your days longer _ __  
_ And makes you hot _ __  
_ And makes you sweat _ __  
_ I envy the sun _ _  
_ _ I envy the wind, _

_ I envy the rain _

_ ~”I Envy the Wind”, Lucinda Williams _

* * *

 

Life narrows remarkably on the boat. It’s bigger than any boat Will’s ever owned (because of course it is, what else did he expect from Hannibal?) but it’s still a contained space with limited variables.

There are simple, orderly spaces to maintain. Sailing lessons to give. Fish to catch and cook, the galley otherwise left to Hannibal’s care.  Healing wounds to mend. They sleep and wake when the mood takes either of them, which is often at first and then a little less often as the days go by.  The boat also has two berths. They sleep in the same room but separately, and if Will occasionally wakes with the unshakeable knowledge that dark eyes are watching him in his rest, he doesn’t protest the observation.  If Hannibal is aware that sometimes when Will turns and stretches loose-limbed in the moonlight, it’s for show as much as for his own comfort, he doesn’t say anything.

The semblance of privacy, coupled with the lack of  _ actual _ privacy, is also among the things Will anticipated from Hannibal, and is not particularly disturbed by.

They move south, landing here and there to supply the boat, to let Hannibal do things with money and identities that Will prefers not to ask about, and to check for news about their presumed deaths.  Will returns to the boat after each trip ashore laden with newspapers. Hannibal saves his favorite articles to read aloud in the evenings, usually the ones reporting the wildest sightings and conspiracies.  Will tries not to laugh and usually fails.

Laughter, he had  _ not  _ anticipated.

There are apparently things left to discover, even within the confines of a small boat and a large ocean.

For his part, Hannibal seems to be mostly rediscovering sunlight.  As they move south it gets warmer, but it’s still early enough in the year to be chilly in the mornings.  Will sheds layers as the day goes on.  Hannibal, Will is beginning to suspect, intends to live entirely in swim trunks until he can get to a tailor.  

Will had spent a matter of weeks locked in the depths of the BSHCI, and he’d still felt blinded by the sunlight when he’d emerged.  He can’t imagine the depth of starvation for fresh air and the warmth of sunlight on bare skin that Hannibal must feel after three years.  Hannibal lies out on the deck for hours, languid as a cat, soaking up warmth,  His skin loses its unnatural pallor, except for the splotchy tan lines where bandages still hide parts of him from the sun.

When he falls asleep, beads of sweat form glistening on his skin and Will does not bother to hide his fascination with the sight.  When he comes back into the cabin and submits to Will’s tending of his injuries, his skin radiates the rays he’s soaked up.  Will doesn’t even need to touch him to feel the heat glowing from him.  But he touches anyway, perhaps a bit more than is strictly needed.  Only a bit.  They are, both of them, still being careful. 

In the second week, it rains.  They’re on deck together when the first raindrop hits Hannibal’s skin, plump and wet and drawing a soft  _ oh _ sound from him.   _ Oh _ , like a child’s first snowstorm, like any wondrous and not-quite-believable thing.  Will would not have believed Hannibal had a sound that uncalculated in him.

Hannibal holds his hand out and catches another droplet in his palm.  He tips his head back to the sky and watches the clouds gather.  Will had every intention of scooting under cover before the rain fully started, but he catches and holds in the motion of turning away, struck motionless by the sight.

He remembers that there were times in his cell that he would know the weather by the people who came to see him.  His lawyer might be impatiently shaking droplets from his coat, or carrying a dripping umbrella.  There might be snowflakes still melting in Alana’s hair. Beverly had mentioned something offhandedly once about an unseasonal warm snap, when she’d arrived without a coat.  Otherwise it could have been any temperature in any month, an endless seasonless gloom. 

It had been disorienting, back out in the world after those weeks of isolation, to find that such things as sun and snow and wind still existed. Hannibal has gone three  _ years _ without a raindrop. No wonder he looks spellbound.  The power that binds Will in place, watching Hannibal get lost in surprised pleasure, is a murkier mystery.  It’s not one he feels prepared to resolve at that exact moment, so he moves into the doorway for cover before he turns back to keep looking.

It’s not a full-blown storm, just a steady sprinkling, but it’s enough to trickle down Hannibal’s upturned face as if he were crying.  Enough to dampen and cool his sun-heated skin, so that Will feels himself shiver in a physical sympathy at how the droplets must feel.  Will imagines that if Hannibal were to look at him now, there would be raindrops beaded in his eyelashes. But Hannibal doesn’t look. He’s utterly absorbed in the experience of the rain as it strokes along his skin and plays a tune in its syncopated pattering along the deck.  The wind has picked up and whips a strand of Hannibal’s too-short haircut across his forehead, where it sticks to the wet skin in a way that Will’s hand itches to fix.

It’s an oddly voyeuristic thing, to watch as Hannibal, who is almost always silently aware of precisely where Will is and what he is doing, forgets about Will’s presence entirely.  Will feels as if perhaps he should duck away inside, and leave Hannibal to his re-discovery of wind and water.

Instead, because a lack of privacy can cut both ways, Will stays and observes both Hannibal and himself.  There’s an unfamiliar sensation coiling in his chest, something it takes him a moment to name as jealousy.

Will has rarely felt jealous or envious.  Regretful, perhaps.  Excluded or undesired, or acutely aware of the gaps between what he wanted and what he could have.  But  _ jealousy  _ implies a certain possessiveness, he considers, as he turns this new idea over in his head.  To be jealous that someone’s attention has turned from you requires a certain belief that it was yours to begin with and Will has not often had that.

He could pretend to be unsure about whether Hannibal’s attention does belong to him, but another thing about life on the boat is that there is very little room to hide, and very little point in telling lies.  Even to oneself.

Carefulness notwithstanding, they belong to each other now.  That they have reached a silent accord to take some time in exploring that doesn’t negate the fact.  And so Will supposes that he could, if he wanted to, take advantage of Hannibal’s distraction to slide into his lap.  He could taste the dampness on Hannibal’s face and ascertain whether some of it is, as he suspects it may be, tears.  He could see where that would go.

He could.  It would be allowed.

So he doesn’t.  

There’s ocean enough and time for patience and healing, for exploration with two good hands and a mouth not filled with Hannibal’s careful stitches.  There are conversations to have.  Arguments, more likely, knowing the two of them.  He holds his place in the doorway.

He stays until the rain begins to let up, and then makes his way back across deck.  There’s still a sprinkling, enough to dampen his skin but not soak him as Hannibal has become soaked. He sits closer than he had been before escaping the worst of the rain, and he’s rewarded with a rapt smile.  He’s not sure if it’s for him or for the rain, and he decides that at this exact moment, he doesn’t care.  He can share Hannibal’s attention for the space of a rainshower.

Maybe.  Then again, maybe not.

Carefully, still, he leans in and rests his cheek against Hannibal’s shoulder where it’s slippery and cool.  He pretends not to notice when the muscles there go rigid at the touch, and he says lightly as he can, “It was snowing when Chilton let me out.  I’d forgotten how the sunlight glares off it.  I thought I’d gone blind. I didn’t have a hat or gloves or anything with me.  It was like walking through a door and being in a new country unexpectedly.  Rain was easier, but snow really bowled me over that first day.”  

There’s a moment of quiet while Hannibal just breathes through whatever is going through him at the moment, and then Will feels the motion of a soft huff of laughter under his cheek.  Hannibal says, “You still didn’t have gloves when you showed up in my kitchen with a gun.  You stopped off for the gun but not a hat.”

“I was in a hurry.”  Will turns his face slightly to press his smile into Hannibal’s skin.  “What bothered you more, the gun, or that you weren’t my first stop?”

Hannibal makes a soft hum, a considering sort of sound, but doesn’t answer.  They sit quietly together, touching just so, and neither of them notices when the rain stops and the sun comes back out.

**Author's Note:**

> It appears that my assorted song-prompts want to live in the same fic universe, so here we are again, my lovelies, with a song prompt from theglintoftherail. Always accepting (but sometimes verrrry slow at filling) prompts [over on Tumblr](http://damnslippyplanet.tumblr.com/) if you think you know just the perfect song to inspire the next bit of this 'verse.


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